Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on September 12, 2013 by Allahpundit

On Thursday, Sept. 12, when Russian and American diplomats came to the negotiating table in Geneva, the Russian side came in with the upper hand. The previous night, they had sent Washington a proposal for dismantling Syria‘s stockpiles of chemical weapons. According to the Russian diplomat Alexei Pushkov, who discussed the outlines of the proposal with TIME, it includes several complicated phases and gives Syria a leading role in the destruction of its own chemical arsenal. The American side, meanwhile, has one trump card in these negotiations — the threat of a military strike against Syria. But Russia seems ready to call that a bluff. “If the US wants to play the main fiddle here, let them go ahead and occupy Syria like they did Iraq or destroy it from the air like they did in Libya,” says Pushkov, who is the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma. “Those are their only two options for taking the lead at this point.”…

But regardless of its final phase, the proposal would clearly give Syria substantial control over the process at every step. The role of the U.S. would be much more modest, says Pushkov. “As one of the leading powers in the world, they will of course influence this process,” he says. “But all of this will be done on Syrian territory. So either Obama has to put boots on the ground, occupy Syria and destroy the weapons himself, or he has to accept the necessity for negotiations with the Syrian government through the mechanisms of the United Nations.”

***

Well these are the fruits of a completely incompetent, epically incompetent foreign policy, diplomacy by Obama. Here is the president of the greatest democracy on earth being lectured, insulting really, in an American newspaper about human rights, about international law, about the protection of the elderly and children in wartime. I mean the chutzpah of writing that by a KGB thug whose last adventure in the world was to invade Georgia, detach two of its provinces and declare them independent, and who for the last decade has been supplying Assad, who we are essentially calling a war criminal, with huge amounts of weaponry including the elements of poison gas.

At dinner the other night, perusing the debacle that is Syria, a German friend observed: “It’s the post-American world — and that means chaos.” We were joined by John Kornblum, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, whose verdict was similar: “What you’re seeing is the steady break-up of the postwar system.”…

The sight of a president who draws a red line on chemical attack and then says “I didn’t set a red line” (the world did); who has Kerry plead a powerful case for military action only to stall; who defers to Congress but seems happy enough with Congress ambling back into session more than a week later; who notes that for “nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security,” and then declares “America is not the world’s policeman” — the sight of all this has marked a moment when America signaled an inward turn that leaves the world anchorless…

In Berlin, which survived as a free city because of a U.S. red line, the change has been noted. It has also been noted in Tehran, Moscow, Beijing and Jerusalem.

***

“Isolationism” is the lazy term often applied to the attitude now found among Democrats and Republicans alike. It is true that the US has a history of periodically withdrawing into its own vast continental indifference, as it did after the first world war. But this time feels different…

I am writing this column on the 12th anniversary of the 11 September terrorist attacks which launched the US into that decade of war – justifiably, in the immediate response to al-Qaida in Afghanistan, unjustifiably and disastrously in Iraq. This is a very different America now.

Maybe after some years spent putting its own house in order it will come back as the – for all its many faults and hypocrisies – indispensable anchor of some kind of liberal international order. Yet given not just its structural domestic problems but above all the changing global power constellation around it, I doubt it. To the many critics and downright enemies of the US in Europe and across the globe, I say only this: if you didn’t like that old world in which the US regularly intervened, just see how you like the new one in which it does not.

***

For more than a decade — after he replaced Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin and even during the time he had to serve as prime minister under his protege, Dmitry Medvedev — Russian President Vladimir Putin has systematically and consistently pursued a policy that can be labeled the Putin Doctrine. In a nutshell, Putin seeks to renew Russia’s status and influence in both regional and global politics and make the Russian Federation a great power again. To achieve this goal, he challenges and subverts America’s posture and interests, relying on three main components…

In the beginning of his presidency, Obama sought to “reset” relations between Washington and Moscow. He even revised some controversial plans to deploy missile systems in Eastern Europe as a trust-building measure designed to appease Putin. Yet the fundamental objectives of the Putin Doctrine made these American gestures ineffective and, in fact, only bolstered Putin’s determination and tenacity.

Putin believes that the U.S. is economically and politically declining and that it is socially degenerating. Indeed, Putin sees the wariness among the American people and their political representatives in the case of Syria and thinks that this is more proof of U.S. weakness and indecisiveness amid Russia’s growing power and influence.

***

The speech was left to encompass a contradiction. The president wished to reassert his credibility while engaging in a forced concession. So the beginning and end were an argument for limited military strikes based on an appeal to American exceptionalism. The rest was an explanation of why such action would not be forthcoming — and is no longer likely. A strike Obama could not effectively justify even with videos of gassed children will not be justified by news of a stalled or inconclusive inspection process.

The resulting message was boldly mixed. Assad is a moral monster — who is now our partner in negotiations. The consequences would be terrible “if we fail to act” — which now seems the most likely course. America “doesn’t do pinpricks” — especially when it does not do anything. “The burdens of leadership are often heavy” — unless they are not assumed…

Putin’s piece is aimed at influencing American public opinion for the purpose of undermining the effectiveness of American power. It deviously reinforces both dovish and hawkish arguments against the administration’s Syria policy. It reminds the doves that military action against Syria goes against everything they believe–and that Obama as a candidate claimed to believe. It reminds the hawks that Obama has shown no inclination or capacity to lead a serious military effort…

Putin doesn’t take his readers for idiots, he takes Obama for a fool–a bumbling improviser who can be rolled by appealing to his vanity and his short-term political needs, and whose actions have no broader purpose. Even the New York Times editorial page acknowledges that last point: “The [Tuesday] speech lacked any real sense of what Mr. Obama’s long-term or even medium-term strategy might be, other than his repeated promise not to drag a nation fed up with wars into a ‘boots-on-the-ground’ fight.”…

Because America is so much mightier than Russia, the American presidency is a much stronger position than the Russian presidency. But a strong man in a position of weakness, if he is ruthless about taking advantage of his adversary’s vulnerabilities, can get the better of weak man in a position of strength. Saul Alinsky understood that, and so does Vladimir Putin.

***

Vladimir Putin rose to power because of his service in the KGB, which in the 1970s was trying to exploit and manipulate the American antiwar movement. We know that while Kerry and others on the left were comparing American troops to Genghis Kahn and throwing their medals away, the KGB was working overtime to infiltrate antiwar groups and overtly propagandizing with the same messages embraced by American liberals.

Putin was doing exactly what his bosses at the KGB showed him back in the day, especially when it comes to Democrats: tug at the pacifistic heartstrings of the left when trying to hamstring an American adversary at the negotiating table.

Kerry begins his negotiations with his Russian counterpart today, and any idea that the US was going to strike has evaporated. Obama is inert, rendering Kerry’s threats empty. As Putin’s op-ed shows, the old game can still be quite effective.

***

What the president’s supporters are hoping for at this point is the same thing we all want—for the good foreign policy fairy to save President Obama (and the country) from the ugly and humiliating trap of a Syria policy he so carefully designed for himself. Luck matters, and America’s structural position in world affairs is so strong that we often manage to extricate ourselves from nasty scrapes with far fewer bruises than our enemies and rivals would like to inflict.

But even the administration’s most ardent supporters at this point must know in their heart of hearts that President Obama’s chances of being ranked as one of our great foreign policy presidents are not very high—and they are melting faster than a Himalayan glacier in an IPCC report. Like Blanche DuBois in a “Streetcar Named Desire”, President Obama has worked himself into a position in which he must depend on the kindness of strangers like Vladimir Putin. It didn’t work out very well for her; let’s hope that President Obama (and the country he leads) can somehow escape the full price of our Syria clusterfarce.

***

The fact that Putin is not the most credible messenger when it comes to the rule of law or pacificism is one thing, but this has always been his strength: taking words and concepts with generally agreed upon meanings—laws, elections, constitutions—and redefining them for his own strategic benefit, and then cloaking himself in their legitimizing powers.

And if the last week has shown us anything, it is that there is one man in the game who has a strategy, and it is not Obama. So far, Putin has played it all right, and accomplished two goals: standing up to U.S. aggression, which will play nicely at home, and keeping Assad in power. Obama will maybe accomplish one—getting Assad to give up his chemical weapons—if he’s lucky. The other one—getting Assad out—well, we’ll just walk that one back, won’t we. And in terms of addressing the people, well, Putin’s now addressing yours, Mr. President.

Blowback

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i had considered that the kgb had the goods on barry too. I was reading a couple of days ago an article about Putin and how our ‘intelligence’ ops said he was basically an insecure guy having been bullied when young…and the obama comment about him slouching really insulted him

Regardless of the truth of that, I thought 1. How stupid that our prezy would say something about any other prezy…very childish…and 2. hmmmmm…i wonder what putin has on barry? I mean after all this is the ruskies.

i’m sure that putin is enjoying his revenge for barry’s remark…or maybe barry was trying to provoke him?

this situation doesn’t feel good at all. Conservatives have been totally correct about barry…and his impact on the country and our image in the world. We were fearful. The left was hopeful…ever anxious to reduce the on Superpower

I think you have a point about the LEFT being anxious to reduce this nation. They’ve made it clear that they think Americans are too proud, too rich, too strong, too healthy, and too successful compared to the rest of the world. That’s what that ‘redistribution’ and ‘ fundamental transformation’ was all about.

They’d love to see this nation reduced in stature.. to be “just one nation among many” and they’d love to see us lose a war to accomplish that goal. All in the name of ‘equality’.

They seem to forget that they live here, too, and if the nation suffers, so will they. The LEFT enjoys the world view of a twelve year old with all the attendant sophistication that goes along with it. They have no idea what it takes to make a society work, a nation work, an economy flourish, or how to maintain the balance of power.

You can bet your last greenback that they would be shrieking and screaming for relief the loudest if they got their way and this nation was thus diminished… and demanding that the RIGHT go to war to bail them out and restore their living standard, too.

Well said. The parallels between Leftism and the immaturity of children are undeniable. They would bring everyone down to achieve equality, not understanding it means reducing us all to the lowest common denominator. But when in practice the result infringes on their privileged lives, they will be the first to whine and demand someone do something!

…the sight of all this has marked a moment when America signaled an inward turn that leaves the world anchorless…

America has a leadership crisis. Look at the leaders of the past and compare them to today’s bunch. Americans, literate Americans, have little respect and very, very little in common with the “leaders” of today.

California votes to grant illegal aliens Drivers
Licenses Lawsuit saying this is PROFILING and
DISCRIMINATORY next on agenda to remove difference in
appearance of license so that it can pass as ID for benefits,
etc.
thatsafactjack on September 13, 2013 at 2:41 AM

Anyway, Axe, (I think PnC is gone) but we should encourage him to save these shards of local color. Even if he thinks they aren’t blog worthy now, they might serve well in a kaleidoscope

novaculus on September 13, 2013 at 2:11 AM

Actually, I do… When I get someone off the wall, I often turn on the voice recorder on my phone and record the conversation, or sometimes just speak a couple of notes to remember them by after they are out of the car. Another hack I follow on Twitter does this all the time and posts the audio file on her blog.

The problem is time… I just don’t have time to write out the stories of everyone I want to.

2:42 am… A guy in his PJ’s and severe bedhead just stormed into a bar in front of me, grabbed a girl by the arm, spun her around violently, and started screaming, calling her a litany of words that can’t be typed here, stormed back to his car, put it in reverse, and slammed into a cop car.

And if the fool the fool in the pjs thought he was having a bad day when he rammed a squad, wait until they slam the door on the drunk tank, and he is in his pjs. And unless someone makes his bond, there will be court in the morning. or maybe after lunch. In his pjs.

And nothing is written in the book, reality is made by you
And every lie that you pursue, eventually turns true
And I was told that your eyes would shine, a light up into space
And infinity would then consume this ordinary place
You know nothing, you know nothing at all
How could you know, you’ll never know anything at all
You’ll never know, you’ll never know anything at all
You know nothing, you know nothing at all

The fact that Putin is not the most credible messenger when it comes to the rule of law or pacificism is one thing, but this has always been his strength: taking words and concepts with generally agreed upon meanings—laws, elections, constitutions—and redefining them for his own strategic benefit, and then cloaking himself in their legitimizing powers.

And this description of Putin differs from one about Obysmal how? Lsnguage and the rule of law have become so twisted by Obysmal and his fellow travelers that the truth has been buried under the mush of self-serving platitudes.

Some on the left want to delude themselves that opposition to Obama is driving the foreign policy change in the Republican party. Reading Ash and others its nice to see they are starting to get it. Across the world ingrates and bastards spit on this country and its soldiers, while ignoring the sacrifices we made against barbarity. IN America whole schools of thought and backed up by the media and entertainment complex churn out propaganda and hate of the United States undermining the very credibility of the country and ridiculing patriotism and pride in America. Well guess what, no more comrades. Enjoy your post-america world and when you look at the ashes and barbarity that rise up its in place don’t say we didn’t warn you.

I strongly encourage HA to ADD THE SOURCE for these “quotes” so that everyone may read further to ascertain CONTEXT and inform themselves further. This selective quotIng from UNNAMED SOURCES is not only outrageously arrogant, it is a mockery of good journalistic practice!

Good Morning, Patriots! …and, Trolls. Under the Obama Administration, 26 year olds are still considered kids to be covered by their parent’s insurance…but, old enough to be a trusted ‘”expert” Political Adviser on the Syria Situation. How about that! – KJMy take: “Elizabeth O’Bagy and the Syrian Emergency Task Force: Taypayer-Funded Regime Change”

Remember back just a few days ago when you were a Neo-Confederate Isolationist if you didn’t want to bomb Syria, pronto? And then, of course, Obama turns Neo-Confederate.

These ‘Obama wins!’ memes are getting stale… not in weeks or months, but often in days or hours after they are spoken.

But I do believe Vlad is wrong that a push against the Elite Class is a sign of weakness in the US: it is a sign of strength and resilience that Americans start holding their Elite Class’ feet to the fire and that we give the Elite Class a smell of what it is like to be toasty. The number of insults on the common man in the US has piled up high since Obama took office, and that was just the top of a long pyramid of excesses heaped upon Americans over the last 100 years by the Elite Class. Now the cracks begin to appear in the structure of what the Elite Class wants.

Vlad calls that weakness.

Yet something is causing those cracks and the structure itself is a burden, not a strength. And something strong is starting to crack it apart.

You can make something happen.

You can stand by and watch something happen.

Or you can end up asking: WTF just happened to me?

The Elites think they are doing the first and we are doing the second, while it is the third that is happening to the Elites who thought they had America all figured out. Have fun with your new toy, Vlad. You know that Public Diplomacy is a strategic form of diplomacy, not just tactical. Obama doesn’t know that, the Elite Class can’t handle it and they are decadent because they cannot recognize simple things like that.

You are right in the decadence, but it is all in the overburden. America is the Cold Turkey People when it comes to doing things: do them or do not, or they will be done to you. Once the edifice erected by the Elites starts to crumble it comes down, not in bits and pieces, but in large chunks that crumble to dust. You are just helping to get the cracks going, Vlad. Those are in the junk piled on America, not America itself.

And Iron Times are ahead for all if you don’t watch your step, Vlad. Remember the nicest man you can only wrongly accuse and convict because he is a danger to you… and if he dies he becomes a martyr that you cannot stop. Watch out at home, Vlad, for we can see the cracks starting to appear there that you are trying to hide and mask as well. Putting an opponent away in prison wrongly is not a sign of strength but of utter weakness, Vlad. Make Obama your toy, it does not matter – you are both moral weaklings who only know force and power. Cracks like you attempt to cover cannot be mended, only covered for a short time. Cackle about America all you wish: Russia’s day is coming from the depths of Siberia.

I strongly encourage HA to ADD THE SOURCE for these “quotes” so that everyone may read further to ascertain CONTEXT and inform themselves further. This selective quotIng from UNNAMED SOURCES is not only outrageously arrogant, it is a mockery of good journalistic practice!

I strongly encourage HA to ADD THE SOURCE for these “quotes” so that everyone may read further to ascertain CONTEXT and inform themselves further. This selective quotIng from UNNAMED SOURCES is not only outrageously arrogant, it is a mockery of good journalistic practice!

mountainaires on September 13, 2013 at 6:37 AM

Tell me you are kidding. I STRONGLY suggest you click on the link in each “story”. You might be amazed at what you discover.

Good article KJ. I’ll admit being a bit insulated from the news lately, I hadn’t followed O’Bagley’s appearance’s or even much knew of her. After your article I looked at a couple more HA threads and caught up a bit. Thx.

I’ve never visited your blog until your comment about someone complaining about your language. I wouldn’t worry much about one opinion. I do agree with the comments above. Your writing skills are quite polished and the stories are very rich in character development. That they are all real anecdotes of your profession make it all the more entertaining. Please don’t stop and I’ll certainly be checking in again.

Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
By George Friedman
In recent weeks I’ve written about U.S. President Barack Obama’s bluff on Syria and the tightrope he is now walking on military intervention. There is another bluff going on that has to be understood, this one from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin is bluffing that Russia has emerged as a major world power. In reality, Russia is merely a regional power, but mainly because its periphery is in shambles. He has tried to project a strength that he doesn’t have, and he has done it well. For him, Syria poses a problem because the United States is about to call his bluff, and he is not holding strong cards. To understand his game we need to start with the recent G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Putin and Obama held a 20-minute meeting there that appeared to be cold and inconclusive. The United States seems to be committed to some undefined military action in Syria, and the Russians are vehemently opposed. The tensions showcased at the G-20 between Washington and Moscow rekindled memories of the Cold War, a time when Russia was a global power. And that is precisely the mood Putin wanted to create. That’s where Putin’s bluff begins.
A Humbled Global Power

The United States and Russia have had tense relations for quite a while. Early in the Obama administration, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showed up in Moscow carrying a box with a red button, calling it the reset button. She said that it was meant to symbolize the desire for restarting U.S.-Russian relations. The gesture had little impact, and relations have deteriorated since then. With China focused on its domestic issues and with Europe in disarray, the United States and Russia are the two major — if not comparable — global players, and the deterioration in relations can be significant. We need to understand what is going on here before we think about Syria.

Twenty years ago, the United States had little interest in relations with Russia, and certainly not with resetting them. The Soviet Union had collapsed, the Russian Federation was in ruins and it was not taken seriously by the United States — or anywhere else for that matter. The Russians recall this period with bitterness. In their view, under the guise of teaching the Russians how to create a constitutional democracy and fostering human rights, the United States and Europe had engaged in exploitative business practices and supported non-governmental organizations that wanted to destabilize Russia.

I just got back to this thread, I’m sorry to have left so abruptly last evening, Nova, but I had an idea for that device I’d mentioned.

I wanted to respond to your point about Chandler and “The Big Sleep”.

Crime fiction, mysteries, are written necessarily as plot driven fiction. However, it is the character driven style of Chandler that makes “The Big Sleep” the success it is, both as a novel and in the film adaptation. The heavy attention to atmosphere and character development make the novel a good candidate for a the visual medium of film. When the producers and director called Chandler to ask him ‘Who killed the chauffeur?’ during production of “The Big Sleep” and he answered “I have no idea.” it was because he’d forgotten to work that out for the novel. The reason being that he’d actually laced together several short stories that he’d written and published in a pulp fiction detective magazine “The Black Mask” over the course of the previous several years. These stories were written to formula to appeal to a particular reader, mostly men of that era, to appeal in that particular genre, and in particular, that specific magazine, and so were rich in atmosphere and character development. Chandler had lost his job as an oil company executive during the Depression, needed to make some money, and began submitting stories to a popular and inexpensive magazine that he’d been reading himself. It is this lacing together of several other plots and characters that gives “The Big Sleep” the complexity of plot, with all of its backtracking,plot twists, double crosses, and betrayals, that make it a success. However, this is also the reason for a few loose ends in plotting that Chandler overlooked before publication, including… who killed the chauffeur.

My point is, it wasn’t so much in Chandler’s writing style intentionally to approach the novel in a way that left out a major plot element. It was in the lacing together of other stories that the plot element was simply overlooked.

I wanted to get this down so that I don’t forget during the day. I’ll repost this tonight on the QOTD if I get time. :)